an article on how the Copac Collections Management Tool project is aiming to help collections managers.

an introduction to ‘Will’s World’ – one of the JISC-funded large-scale exemplar projects.

an invitation for supply chain organisations such as system vendors and publishers to engage with the Discovery initiative.

If you’d like to receive future newsletters by email you simply need to drop us a line at rdtf-discovery@sero.co.uk and you’ll be added to the distribution list.

It was interesting to read Harvard’s announcement of the changes they will be undergoing in order to unify their 73 (!) libraries. Much of the announcement concentrated on structural changes but this sentence caught my eye and it seems to suggest that some game changing LIS developments could be in the offing: “The changes will position the Library to lead in scholarly communication and open access, to design next generation search and discovery services, and to accelerate digitization and digital preservation.”

Staying on the subject of audio collections, the Music Library Association is currently working on a final version of their Music Discovery Requirements document and they are currently inviting thoughts and suggestions. This presentation by Nara Newcomer provides useful background on the aim of the Music Discovery Requirements document.

The Discovery programme is particularly focused on the business case for adopting open metadata so it was interesting to read this white paper from Nielsen which reports on the effect of supplying (or not supplying) metadata within the book industry. One of the key conclusions reads: “Overall we see clear indications that supplying a set of full enhanced metadata for product records helps to maximise sales, and that this relationship between enhanced metadata and sales is even stronger for the online retail sector.” Of course UK university libraries are not in the business of book retail and this report could simply serve to make publishers more commercially protective over the metadata they create but all the same it is good to have some high profile research published in this area. It’s a pity that they don’t separate out enhanced metadata from the provision of a cover images in their analysis – from research I’ve been involved in previously I suspect there might be some interesting findings that remain hidden by the approach they’ve taken.

The Government’s call for input to their consultation on “open standards for software interoperability, data and document formats” is ongoing and it doesn’t close until 3 May so there’s plenty of time left to think about what the direct and indirect supply chain ripples might be.

In my last news digest I mentioned that ‘big data’ suddenly seemed to be everywhere – This week Nick Edouard’s reflective post over on the BuzzData blog struck a chord with me, particularly his point that “Open-data initiatives are good for many reasons, not least because they can radically improve internal data-sharing.” Often the discussion around open data tends towards a leap of faith/altruistic model but keeping focused on the ‘what’s in it for us?’ question seems a surer way of securing the internal resources needed to release data in the first place.

In closing, a couple of blogposts I’ve read recently have got me thinking about the importance of identifying a vision that other people can quickly understand and get behind:

I think that the Discovery vision packs a similar punch but perhaps it could be more emotive?: “[Our vision] is about making resources more discoverable both by people and machines.” Is that a vision which speaks to you? Have you found the words to succinctly describe your institution’s vision for resource discovery? Please do share your thoughts in the comments below.